Key cleaning

[John Musselwhite]

At 05:52 PM 06/03/96 -0700, Randy wrote:

>Normally, when I clean ivories, I clean them with luke warm water and a
>cloth, or with a mild solution of Ivory soap, or with smoker's tooth paste.

 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Now why didn't I (smoker that I am!) think of trying that?  How well does it
work?

As an aside, in the Banff piano shop there is an old Steinway (an O?) with
possibly the best ivories I've ever seen. When I first saw it I thought,
"what a beautiful plastic replacement job!" but on CLOSE inspection in the
right light the grain showed through the brilliance of the finish. The head
and tail joint is so fine on every key that it is almost invisible even
after all these years. It was a real pleasure just to SEE such a nice
keyboard since even the best I've seen have had at least some faults.

I get great satisfaction out of ivory work... possibly more than any other
single thing I do to pianos. While tuning, regulating and other work is
satisfying from a musical and technical POV, ivory holds a special place
(for me, anyway) because of its origins. When I am restoring a keyboard I
feel a certain empathy to the Oriental artisans who prayed out of respect
for the elephants who gave their lives for the sake of their art, and when
the keyboard is beyond restoration and I have to remove the broken and worn
old ivory,  I feel a twinge of remorse at the futility of it all. A restored
ivory keyboard is however, a pleasure to be enjoyed by anyone just as any
ivory piece is. Too bad they're often just planed off and pre-formed plastic
slapped on instead.

Not that I have anything against a properly done plastic job as sometimes
(often?) that's pretty much the way it has to be. I still feel for the
elephants, though.

                        John

John Musselwhite, RPT
Calgary, Alberta Canada
musselj@cadvision.com